]]>Tomorrow, iOS 7 will finally hit the streets for everyone — except those with an older, incompatible device. But a user on Reddit spotted a handy new feature: some older models will have the opportunity to download the “last compatible version” of an iOS app. It’s not perfect, as some commenters have noted that the feature works spottily for phones running iOS 3.1 (sorry, original iPhone), but it does mean that customers that don’t or can’t upgrade to iOS 7 won’t get left in the dust without any app options.

]]>It’s been promising an LTE network for more than a year, but in the next three months Clearwire will actually deliver. Cleawire CFO Hope Cochran said Wednesday that Clearwire will begin constructing its LTE network rollout in the next two weeks and begin ramping up its build-out in the fourth quarter, FierceWireless reported.

There’s still no word on when Clearwire will make the new network commercially available to Sprint and other wholesale customers like Leap Wireless (Clearwire won’t sell LTE services directly to consumers), but Clearwire is on track to complete its first stage by June of 2013 with 5,000 cell sites, Fierce said. That’s not a huge number, but Clearwire isn’t planning to build a ubiquitous network. Instead, it’s placing LTE cells in high-traffic urban areas, and selling that capacity to other carriers to augment their current LTE services.

The big issue for Clearwire will be devices. While Sprint has agreed to use Clearwire to give its own LTE network extra bandwidth oomph, it doesn’t yet have devices that support either Clearwire’s 2.5 GHz band or its special flavor of LTE. Clearwire has promised that dual-mode smartphones and modems supporting both the frequency-division LTE used by the rest of the country’s carriers and its own time-division LTE will be plentiful, but they’ve yet to emerge in the U.S. For instance, the recently launched Galaxy S III and the new iPhone 5 will be able to access Sprint’s LTE networks but not Clearwire’s.

Rival carriers are continuing to build out their LTE networks. This week, AT&T expanded its own LTE network to Seattle; Portland, Ore.; and Memphis, Tenn.; three of the last remaining big cities missing from its metro market 4G footprint. AT&T still doesn’t have the breadth and depth of Verizon’s network, which now covers 235 million people in close to 400 markets and is expanding into rural regions, but it’s now has a footprint of 72 big cities. Meanwhile, Sprint has some catching up to do. It’s deployed its network in six regional clusters

]]>It’s getting down to the wire, and Apple clearly means business. Yesterday they sent out an email to those enrolled in the iPhone development program notifying members that all apps submitted will now be reviewed for approval using iPhone OS 3.0. That means that even if you were designing your app using the iPhone 2.0 SDK, as Apple has insisted that all apps submitted until now must be, it’s finally time to break out the 3.0 SDK and see if your work is compatible with the new software. If not, better get it into shape quick, because now Apple has yet another reason to reject you.

In the notification email from Apple, they also cover existing apps already available in the App Store. According to them, all apps should (theoretically) already be compatible with the new software. In my experience, this isn’t exactly true, with some very odd behavior coming from some apps, like eBay mobile not letting me successfully sign in. There are other quirks as well, but hopefully devs take this last month to test and correct both of those so that when iPhone 3.0 officially launches people don’t encounter the same annoying ticks that beta testers have experienced.

Bad user experience isn’t the only thing devs have to fear if they don’t make sure their existing apps play nice with the new software, though. Apple notes in the email that should any app prove incompatible with iPhone 3.0 once it goes live, they reserve the right to remove it from the App Store. Hopefully this isn’t just an empty threat, because it could help trim at least some of the vaporware fat from the store.

I’ve seen a few articles lately on the file incompatibility between iWork ’08 and files saved in iWork ’09.

Macnn and other sites have discussed it. As usual, there are the silly comments regarding Apple not having tested this, it’s worthy of Microsoft, blah, blah, blah. Many comments tended to be more rational, though, pointing out that new versions of software frequently “convert” older files and then are not compatible with the older version. This isn’t really that unusual.

I think Apple could have made this easier if they had explained in the tech note a primary reason for the incompatibility. It’s the old standard support line: It’s a feature, not a bug. Really.

The iWork ’08 saved files are packages. For those unfamiliar with this, a package is essentially a specialized directory (yes, I’m simplifying it). Most Mac applications are packages, as is the iPhoto library. If you right-click a package file and select “Show Package Contents,” it’ll open like a folder to reveal other files and folders below. Here you see the package contents of a Numbers ’08 document.

The problem with this approach comes when you want to transfer these files. Some email systems or file shares don’t know what to do with a package file. For example, when I look at iWork ’08 documents in Windows they appear as folders. In short, the package format was hindering transfer and sharing of iWork files. Not good if you want your product to become more popular.

Enter iWork ’09, which saves documents as a more traditional “flat” file. Apple’s implementation of this is that the file is still a package, but compressed into zip format, which makes it flat. In fact, you can see this for yourself by changing the file name’s extension to .zip, then decompressing it by double-clicking. The uncompressed file will be a folder containing some files/folders like you saw in the iWork ’08 file. (As you can see, it’s not an exact match, so some data appears to be stored in the file itself.)

As a flat file, you should be able to email it and share with other iWork users without problems. iWork ’09 opens it easily, knowing it’s compressed and handling it accordingly. iWork ’08, however, is expecting a package file; it doesn’t know what to do with the flat file iWork ’09 uses. This is why it cannot open those files.

I think Apple really needed to address the package issue for transporting iWork files, and I’m glad they did so in iWork ’09. It neatly addresses a problem that was only going to get worse as the package became more popular. I don’t think having a new version not opening in an old version of the program is that egregious, especially given the problem the new version is addressing.